Before moving to Los Angeles to become the godfather of that city's
improv scene, multi-reedist Vinny Golia was a painter in New York.
I'm betting he was an Abstract Expressionist, but on Music
for Like Instruments, he's Peter Breughel, creating music
that is at once sweeping and precisely observed, hilarious and dire,
vulgar and sublime.

And he's done all this within the self-imposed instrumental constraint
of a quartet of playing nothing but Eb saxophones. In fact, three
of the four players, Nathan Herrera, Jason Mears and Beth Schenk,
play only alto saxophone, further limiting the coloristic range available.

Or so you would think.

But what a range of sounds he gets, from the Charles-Ives-via-Anthony-Braxton
march music of "We believe the use of Homo Sapiens is time sensitive"
to the Messiaen-ic birdcalls of "Bopus, for Franco Boragoni".

Much of the creditand solo spacegoes to the leader, who
plays top (sopranino) to bottom (contrabass saxophone, or tubax) with
equal authority and feeling. The latter is an ungainly piece of plumbing
and it's remarkable that Golia can get any music out of it at
all, let alone the hilarious tone-painting of "Schwarznegger"
(sic). Golia gives the ungainly monster a bratty theme, then sends
it crashing through a chattering thicket of altos, the Terminator
himself shouting, "Schtopp vining!" to a restive California
electorate. It seems that Golia predicted the arc of the recall election
back in December 2002, when this was recorded. It's political
satire as gross and engrossing as a Daumier engraving.

If none of the other 13 compositions rise to quite that devastating
level, each is remarkably individual in color and intent, and while
you can hear echoes of groups like the World Saxophone Quartet and
ROVA, the main voice is Golia's alone. Like Chopin's Etudes,
this West Coast summa saxophonica works equally well as art
and as encyclopaedia. I can't wait to hear what he does with
the double reeds, clarinets or Bb saxophones as this project continues.

In
the meantime, Golia has been busy with other projects documenting
his playing in other instrumental contexts. Feeding Frenzy
finds Golia and his boatload of flutes and clarinets among a string
quartet of two violins, cello and bass (the latter handled by the
astonishing Ken Filiano).

This quartet has a dark and roiling sound and Golia's compositions
play to this color. They're knotty and somber, full of seriousness
of purpose. "Did I Forget To Mention That?" is typical.
The low strings play a determined line against the brighter and more
mercurial violins. Golia's clarinet darts between them, a salmon,
grimly swimming upstream. In "Barehanded cricket catch",
the strings try to surround a piping piccolo. They grab a whirling
figure and we're in the middle of a flock of sparrows.

The other extreme of the animal kingdom is evoked in the closing "When
Elephants Then Come Waltzing Through Your Living Room" as Golia
charms away a motoric, double-stopped string figure with dancing clarinet
to clear the way for a galumphing pachyderm in the person of the contrabass
clarinet. It's fun to listen to, but even here, a sense of claustrophobia
often creeps in. Still, this is audacious music, the product of a
first-rate musical imagination. It's just not quite the near-masterpiece
that Music for Like Instruments is.